please critique something i wrote

hi guys,

 

i am new to this forum.  i am not sure if this is allowed or not but i wrote some stuff which i think may be interesting to some people on this forum.  having looked through this forum i realised that the readers of this forum are very critical of all statism and are very well read.  i would love to hear what you think of some of my ideas.

these thoughts came to me while reading hayek

1)some thoughts on equality of men and women in the army

2)http://gregloutsenko.blogspot.com/2009/05/gay-marriage.html

3)http://gregloutsenko.blogspot.com/2009/04/gay-marriage.html

 

these thoughts came to me while reading christopher hitchens

4)http://gregloutsenko.blogspot.com/2008/12/holy-ethics.html - ethics derived from superstition

5)http://gregloutsenko.blogspot.com/2008/11/organised-religion.html - some babel on organised religion 

 

 

I read some of it.  It's pretty well written.  But it comes from a minarchist perspective which I don't agree with.  I think Hitchens is a war mongerer and a racist, so it is hard for me to get excited about him.  The ethics derived from superstition post "Holy Ethics" is unfortunate because it casts people of faith as being irrational or incorrect, and betrays a misunderstanding of nature and value theory.

Faith is belief without any proof, religions are the institutions that can grow up around such belief systems. I don't think I could offer someone of faith any imperative to change their belief system, if they happen to guess the right answer they will be just as correct as the scientific answer. However its much safer and more peaceful to follow a evidence based belief system.

spetsnaz:

these thoughts came to me while reading hayek

1)some thoughts on equality of men and women in the army

Putting aside the fact that who is or is not in the state military should be of no concern to libertarians, throughout that essay you deny the different biology of men and women.

I think you're confusing libertarianism with egalitarianism.

sicsempertyrannis:

Putting aside the fact that who is or is not in the state military should be of no concern to libertarians, throughout that essay you deny the different biology of men and women.

quite the opposite.  firstly it is a concern of a liberal if there is discrimination.  a liberal recognises that everyone is different.  the only way to treat different people fairly is to treat them exactly the same.  this is because there is no objective way of accounting every single difference a human might have to other humans.  what my essay was trying to highlight was that when the army chooses to test women and men differently their testing becomes arbitrary.  this is because they fail to account ohter differences presides sex e.g. people's hight which might give them an advantage over others.    

 

thank you for everyone who read my stuff.  i greatly appreciate the input even if you do not agree with my view points.

 

on hitchens, he might seem very pretensions but he does have certain ideas which i find to be good.  for example i share many of his concerns when it comes to organised religion.

spetsnaz:

the only way to treat different people fairly is to treat them exactly the same

The classical definition of justice has been the Aristotelian "Treat equals equally and unequals unequally but in proportion to their relative differences". Then you state there is no objective way to view these differences, which I agree with. The problem I see you running into is that just because we don't have a perfected method of applying justice to real life that is no reason to discard it. For example, if two people take a math test and one scores higher but the winner attended a hoity toity prep school, justice requires that you take this into account.

I think when you advocate a level playing field, this fits into the "equality of opportunity" as opposed to "equality of outcome" interpretation of justice. Perhaps you should develop an idea of what counts as a level playing field, since arguably it is unfair for some people to be taller even though they will be born this way. I.e. life will never be fair as long as we are born unequally but given equal opportunity. So some argue that justice is not ingrained in the natural lottery and thus interpret justice to require equality of outcome. Maybe this is the logical conclusion, I don't know, I don't study justice.

 

yes, that is exactly what i believe: there is no objective way of accounting for everyone's difference. 

spetsnaz:

yes, that is exactly what i believe: there is no objective way of accounting for everyone's difference. 

I think the approximation we use is for any belief we allow 3 points. 2 extremes and one middle point, and we group people based on which is closest.